My Immortal
by ideatpoptarts
Summary: Kenny meets another immortal and is not pleased with what he finds. Not one bit. Kenny/OC
1. One Night

_A/N:_ Let's try this again. I still don't own anything. All characters of South Park belong to Matt and Trey. Comments are very much appreciated :)

* * *

The glorious metropolis of Hell was a cauldron of lust just waiting to be explored. She hadn't been there long enough to gain her surroundings before the demons were pulling on her skirts and laughing hungrily from dark alleyways. Taking a single long inhale of the sultry air, she managed to dust off the tiny black demons and stroll along the streets toward the home of the dark lord himself. Her bare feet dug into the coals in the road and hisses crept up her body to shake her to the core. If her soul had still inhabited her body, it would have been shattered into a million pieces.

It took longer than she remembered, but then again she hadn't been to Hell in a while. She hadn't really seen a need to. Life on Earth had been a boring albeit depressing situation. People died, but there wasn't so much she cared to do about that. Resurrection was a tricky thing. For most people anyway.

She never allowed herself to wander long within this realm, fearing she would become too drunk with sin to even want to go back to her simple, secluded life and her sad, silly little home. She was a goddess worshipped by millions across the ages…but she was also the only thread a little girl with devilishly dark curls had to life. A life the little girl didn't even particularly want.

Crunching along the road faster and faster, the immortal let her nostrils flare at the smell of sulfur and she glanced around just enough to ensure she was heading in the right direction. This time she'd choose to come in an off-white gown that looked more like bed sheets wrapped around her spindly body. It made her stand out like a wildflower in an otherwise barren land, but at least she had physical evidence that she didn't belong here. It was all too easy to forget with the intoxicating allure of eternal freedom and havoc. She'd reigned some kingdoms in her days…destroyed some monarchies…but this was not her land to claim. Her need was far more pressing and far less dramatic than those scarlet caves could hide.

She came upon a familiar piece of land and spotted a boy not much older than her host leaning against a wired fence. His features were cut sharp and he dared her to approach him with frantic, fiery eyes.

"I know why you're here. Father warned me."

She decided against responding. Demons were usually more useful if they talked themselves out.

"Well. Aren't you going to try and take him?" he asked, straightening up and presenting his black head to the rays of light bouncing off the lavafall to the east. He noticed her relaxing and his wild face grew furious. "Can't you talk?"

"Yes," she replied.

"Then answer me. Answer me or I'll go inside and lock him in and nothing you do will let you take him. Down here he's mine."

A small smirk played on her lips. "Grown attached to him, have we? It's been what…two months? You couldn't have broken him yet."

Rounding the fence, he approached her with a growl. "Just go away. He doesn't want to go back. None of them do. They belong to us…all of them."

"They belonged to _us_ first."

"Bullshit," said the dark boy.

"You should really start reading up on your history, Damien," said the woman, letting her body fall backwards and into a chair that rose straight from the ground with an audible moan. "I have. That's how I know you."

When he didn't reply, she tugged on the edge of her skirts and crossed her legs lazily. "Do you know me, Damien? Do you know who I am?"

Damien nodded. His face was flushed and she quietly let her eyes fall to his fists balled up against his slacks.

"Grand. Then you'll go and get your Daddy and we'll talk this all out," she said, lifting an arm and letting her red fingernails run a track under the soft skin of her wrist. "I really don't _want _to do it, you know. If it was up to me, I'd let you keep him."

"Fuck off," said Damien, teleporting with a flick of his hand and a scrunch of his nose. She smiled. Demigods were such funny little creatures.

A moment later, Lucifer himself appeared in all his glory with a massive eruption of fire and brimstone with his son clinging to his arm. "Hello, Hydra. I apologize for not meeting you at the gate. I've been…busy."

Hydra let a dismissive hand float through the air. "It's all forgotten. I'm here. And I've come to take the boy back."

A frown settled in to Lucifer's face. "Damien's taken a liking to him. There are plenty of other people in Hell who would love to go back with you…why not take one of them? Fuck…take two! Just leave him this one."

"Satan…truly…I would if I could. You know these people. It's him they want back. And he's a very specific sort of fellow…isn't he? He's not just one I can pass off as Joe Schmoe down the street. You got to think about it…I haven't taken anyone back in over a year. It was going to come to this sooner or later."

"Then make it later, you fucking bitch!" cried Damien. "It isn't fair, papa! It just isn't fair!"

"Now, now, Damien…he'll be back."

"When he's old and gray? When his ass is nothing but a head of lettuce and his dick flings about like a pendulum? I want _my _Pip, papa. My virginal, scared little Pip who still believes he can be saved and that he'll wake up soon…that all the things I do to him are nothing but a dream. If she takes him now, who knows what he'll become!"

Lucifer looked up with pleading eyes at Hydra only to found her face had assumed that mournful, faraway look that she took when her mind was made up. Anger rose in his belly and, had she been any type of material being, he would have cast her then and there to the deepest, darkest depths of Hell. But nothing could shake her, that being of utter selfishness. Nothing could change her mind.

But something could damn well make sure it didn't happen again.

"Go and get the boy, Damien."

"Papa!"

"Do as I command!"

The boy teleported with an angry snap. Satan squeezed his eyes tightly together in an attempt to calm his boiling emotions.

"You will take two mortals back to South Park. Another has entered my realm too soon."

Hydra merely nodded, having become disinterested with the absence of Damien's pitiful pleas for his plaything. She didn't have to wait very long for the son of Satan to return. He approached her with a blank face and forcibly pushed his lover away from his body as if he was ridding himself of an limb.

"Go away and don't come back."

Pip clamored up from the ground and stared wide-eyed all around him. His blonde hair was sticking up in all sorts of directions and the only stitch of clothing he wore was a bowtie limp against his neck. "Damien? What's going on?"

"You're going back to Earth. Con-fucking-grats, Pirrup."

A wide grin spread over Pip's face and the tears began to flow. "Oh happy day! I knew I was a good boy! I knew I wouldn't be stuck in this God-forsaken abyss forever! Oh, Damien! This is the best of news!"

She had half expected Damien to start crying himself. But then she noticed his eyes were too busy being locked on her in an icy glare ghastly enough to freeze a mortal woman. Damien turned to leave before a large red hand settled on his shoulder. "Damien…Pip will not be ascending alone. Go to the northwest wing. Ask for Tammy Warner."

Her heart, which up to that moment had beat with a furious hunger to harm and destroy, suddenly ran cold. She had walked in a source of infinite beauty and grace. Everything collapsed inside of her into a small and dim place quite beyond her ability to find.

Pleased at the change in Hydra's demeanor, Damien left once again, all too eager to return with the immortal's burden.

"It was going to come to this sooner or later," said Satan, watching the shaking Hydra rise from her makeshift seat.

"No…it was going to keep going on the way it's always gone on. He wasn't going to know…he wasn't going to remember."

Damien returned with a pop and wickedly guided Tammy over to Hydra.

"We should never forget the ones we love…I've learned that. Move on, maybe, but never forget them," said Satan, glancing up toward the heavens with a quiet sigh.

Hydra stared into the faces of the mortals before her. She pictured her human body in a bed far above her just sleeping away…unaware of the turmoil she was about to endure or of the lies that would end this quiet, unassuming night.

"That was beautiful. Now if you can give me a line that says 'Remember me? Nope? Oh…I'm just your wife in another dimension' then I'll be set to face the world tomorrow."

* * *

Katie Journigan awoke that morning in tears. The clock on her bedside table was buzzing angrily in her ear. She didn't have to move to know her older sister was standing in the doorway.

"He's back."

Emery let out a pleased squeal and went to the bed to give Katie a large hug. "Oh, thank you, sissy. You have no idea how much it will mean to Sydney. And you'll have a little ring bearer to walk down the aisle with...won't that be darling?"

The younger sister lifted her dark head from the pillow and choked back a sob. "You don't know...you just don't know..."


	2. Aftermath

Katie rose from her bed begrudgingly. Throwing the covers up haphazardly over her pillow, she smoothed out the wrinkles in her comforter and sighed, shrugging to herself in the dark.

Her sister passed the doorway again and peeked her head in. "You don't want to stay longer?"

"No. It's time I get going…if it's okay with you, that is."

"Of course," said Emery, watching the smaller girl pad her way to a bare dresser in the corner. "I just got off the phone with Sydney. He was thrilled and wanted to make sure I swung you by there before taking you back to dad's place so he could thank you."

Katie nodded, tugging out a single black drape that had been stuffed into the topmost drawer. "I'll take that as a chance to talk to his brother. I had a couple of dreams once I returned…I was afraid I would."

"I knew something was wrong. Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

Throwing the drape over her forehead and adjusting her hair to fold behind the flaps of fabric, Katie frowned. "I like to pretend they're random sometimes. You know…like I'm normal." Taking a side of the drape in each hand, she crossed the material along her body and tugged on an excess of material that had built up near her face.

"Here…let me get that," said Emery, entering the room and straightening out the lines of her sister's outfit. "You're normal to me, Katie. Nothing you can say is going to scare me away."

Katie gave out a shiver against the cold air in the room. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Emery attempted a smile but failed. The sight of her little sister encroached by the confines of her hijab was forcing tears into her eyes. Even after all these years of becoming accustomed to reading Katie through those emotional green orbs, it still shook her to watch such a lovely, lively child disappear into her disease. And that's all Emery could ever bring herself to call this mess. A horrible, deadly disease. "Will Pip be okay?"

Katie shook her head. "No. That was the first dream. I have to warn him or all that work will have been for nothing. He'll just get himself killed again. But that wasn't the one that worried me. In the second one…in the second one, I _died_."

The woman ran a hand from her sister's covered head to her cheek and bent down to come to eye level with her. "You haven't been dead in a while. It was just a nightmare."

"No!" she shouted, shaking off her sister and pacing the room irritably. "No…it wasn't like that…it was different. It was a year from today. This very day. And I was dead. For good."

Emery rose to her feet slowly, as if scared to startle the other girl. "Katie…"

"I was standing there…I was free. _I _was free. I was leaving this body and returning to Ry'leh…"

"Katie, stop it!" her sister cried, shaking against the doorway in her rain boots and her flimsy skirt.

"But I saw him. It was a sign. I saw him right before I died…everything got so bright. I couldn't tell if he came with me."

In an instant, her sister was upon her and shaking her wildly. How she'd even managed to move with her previous quivers was beyond Katie's imagination, but she was there and her face was close and fierce in her own. "STOP IT! Damn you…stop doing this to her!"

"It's still me, Em…"

"No…no it's not. Not when you talk like this." She bent her head down to her chest and drew a ragged breath. "I don't care what you saw…I don't care how it happens…you aren't taking her."

Katie's eyes went dark and flat against her pale face. "Then I'll take you."

It was one of those awkward moments the sisters had become accustomed to. Her senior year, Emery had spent hours painstakingly researching Ovid's _Metamorphoses _and Dante's _Divine Comedy_ for symbolism. Not ashamed that she possessed the single most intelligent sister in Middle Park, much less the western half of the United States, she had approached Katie for a quick review. Her sister took one look at the essay before spitting on the first page and storming out of the room. Emery didn't speak to her for three whole days before she received a long and rather passionate text about a reference to "that slithering, simpering slut" Io in the second paragraph.

Apparently, wielding a new body and being older than consciousness itself didn't prevent the hellfire raging from a woman scorned.

Collecting herself and walking towards the door, Emery began to button her coat around her thin white sweater. "It's cold out. Grab some gloves. I'll start the car."

"Emery…"

"It's okay."

She shut the door before she allowed the tears to fall. She hated it when her sister came back from Hell.

Her boots squeaked along the floor as she made her way down the hall. Spotting her stepfather lounging on the couch with all his limbs spread in every which way, Emery stopped. Beer bottles decorated the floor. She wondered if he had gotten drunk before or after his wife had given birth yet again to a child she'd never wanted. Emery had to believe that the multiple births made her immune to bonding with her children. But that still didn't explain why Trish Fisher was staring her firstborn down from behind the kitchen sink as if her presence offended the very core of her being.

"Ungrateful little brat up yet?"

"Katie and I are about to leave," said Emery, looking blindly about the living room.

Her mother scoffed and reached for an apple. "Just leaving like that, eh? That all the thanks I get?"

One time in the not so distant past, her mother must have been a beauty. She had shoulder length blonde hair that was thick with dark highlights and a body as lithe and fragile as her twenty-three year old daughter. But all the drugs and alcohol had completely eroded any lovely features that had once existed and left the face of a sixty year old on a life spanning little more than four decades.

"We talked about this yesterday. You said it was okay."

Trish bit into her apple. "Did I? I was probably stoned."

Emery sighed. "Sydney and his family have been going through hell the past few months without Pip…he loves his brother, just like I love Katie."

"Yeah? That why you used her?"

An angry blush fell on the younger girl's face. "I got some drugs from the hospital. She didn't feel anything."

Her mother let out an ugly laugh. "Really? That what you tell yourself to let you sleep at night?"

The only noise in the room was the sound of the drunk snoring on the couch.

"Exactly," said Trish, pushing herself away from the kitchen stool and rounding a table to approach her daughter. "You're just like your mother, you know that? I saw her potential." She spit into a nearby plant pot. "Then I realized she was just going to waste it."

"She's ten…she has an IQ of 195…she's in college while all the kids her age are running outside and enjoying their childhood. She's given you everything…her chance at happiness…her life…what more do you want from her?"

Her mother shook her head. "You just don't get..why, good morning, darling."

Emery whipped her head around to spot Katie shutting her door quietly. She walked toward her sister and regarded her mother with curious eyes.

"Leaving?"

"Yeah."

Katie put her weight on her left foot and the floor creaked. A fart shot up from the couch.

"How's your boyfriend? Emile…Evan…"

"Erik is still dead," said Katie.

The stunned silence in the room seem to be an entirely palpable person standing between the three women. Emery's hand had flown to her mouth in horror.

"What? You ain't gonna bring him back of all people?"

"Mother!" cried Emery.

"Don't you mother me. What kind of fucked up shit is that? You'll bring back the mailman but you won't bring back that poor boy?"

Katie's small eyelids shook softly. "There is a natural order to things. Every time I bring someone back, that order is disrupted. I cannot save everyone. This world would delve into chaos."

"She starts spouting off that kinda crap, see…and that's when you got to watch her," said the mother shaking her greasy head.

Placing her hand on her sister's slumped shoulders, Emery led Katie toward the door of the double wide. "We're leaving. I'll call you later, ma."

Their mother threw her hands in the air, letting her forgotten apple hang limp in her discolored fingertips. "Doubt it. They cut off the phone last night some time…damn it, Mark, you gonna get up any time soon and explain why the phone bill won't paid?"

And so the two sisters made their way out into the Colorado winds and into a black sedan. Turning on the heat directly and frowning when cool air spewed from the vents, Emery mumbled an apology. But there was nothing left to be said.

* * *

Stuart McCormick stood at the door of his home with a beer in his hand and a blank, stunned look on his face. "Well I'll be damned," he said, taking a swing of his beverage. "Don't just stand out there. Come on in."

Tammy Warner stepped into the McCormick home with a camouflage jacket comfortably warming her small body. She looked about the room for Kenny and spotted him lazily lying on the couch with his brother. The two boys were focused on their modest television and completely ignoring the hanging mouth of their sister, who had seen Tammy as soon as the door was open and seemed to be having trouble understanding exactly where she was anymore.

"Hey, Ken," said Tammy, smiling broadly at the blonde who lifted his head nonchalantly from the arm of the couch. A second later his eyes were bulging out from behind the fur lining his parka.

"_Tammy?_" He popped up from his seat and made his way to the girl standing in the middle of his living room. "_What the fuck?"_

By this time Kevin realized his footrest was gone and he turned his head to meet his former classmate who had been dead for far over a year now. "Christ! Ma! Ma! There's a ghost in here!"

"Quit yelling in the house, Kevin! Y'all come and get your breakfast now. These waffles ain't gonna be hot for too much longer."

"But ma!" exclaimed Kevin. Karen began to cry.

"No buts, Kevin," said Carol, shuffling into the room. "Hello, Tammy. Y'all decide to join us fer…wait a gosh damn minute here!" Her husband appeared at her side with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Aren't you all glad to see me?" said Tammy, blinking prettily and gazing about the room.

"Sweetie…of course we are…but…you're dead," Carol whispered, looking to Stuart for confirmation of this fact. He simply nodded.

"Died a bit over a year ago. Syphilis took ya. Don't much care for girls giving my boy STDs, if you want my honest opinion," he added.

If she was embarrassed, Tammy never showed it. "Oh gosh, I'm awful sorry, Mr. McCormick. But Kenny's okay…he looks okay…you look…really good, Ken."

"_So do you," _replied Kenny, taking in every feature of her face at once and feeling elated at the sight of it all. Questions went racing through his head. What did this mean? Was Tammy an immortal? Did she remember him dying? Would her pert little mouth still feel as good wrapped around him as it did that single day so long ago?

"Well…as long as you're here, I guess I can get Karen to split her waffle with you…i-if that's okay with you," said Carol, eyeing the brunette carefully.

Tammy's face lit up the room and the family all stumbled rather dumbfounded into the kitchen. As Kenny made his way to breakfast, he grabbed Tammy's hand and smiled. Perhaps life was finally taking a turn for the better.


End file.
